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About Me

My (nick)name is Moz and this blog was originally about my travails, tribulations and (occasional) small successes while writing my Honours thesis and fighting the demons of my mental illness. Said thesis was nicknamed Frankie and this is my first blog. These days I am working on my Masters thesis, and still trying to string words together that make some sense.
My financial vices include a good cup of coffee, live music, and buying real newspapers so I can do the crossword. Unsurprisingly I love books, and am a bit obsessed with writing the perfect letter and making an even more perfect mix CD. I earn part of my living as a wedding singer in Sydney, Australia, but long term I hope to research, write and teach as an academic, and travel further than interstate. David Bowie once referred to me as 'the quintessential girl from Ipanema' - it briefly made my mother proud.

We Used To

I am shaking with
nerves, and with something else. The something else doesn’t have a name,
because at this point I can barely identify what is happening to me. However, tonight I have a job to do. I am
singing roughly half of the most important piece of music in Catholic liturgy
all year, and I’ve learned it all in the last 24 hours. It is unaccompanied,
difficult, and almost perfect for my particular skills, for my voice which
has suddenly kicked into gear quite spectacularly. But I do not feel worthy to
be here, in a house of God on Easter Vigil night. This is a place for
believers, for those who practice what they say, and because of what is
happening to me outside this place I cannot believe that I belong here, that
this job is mine.

The Bishop has asked
for me, urged on by my favourite organist. She spent an hour or so on the phone
to me last night, playing the piece down the phone to me and, unbeknownst to
her, to my father’s dictaphone which has been volunteered for this purpose (it’s
amazing what my parents will volunteer when something Catholic is up for
grabs). The piece of music is marked in pen (oh, the horror!), with bits
scratched out in Marie’s elderly scrawl. My more modest cursive has made small
circles around notes that bother me, phrases I have sung under my breath all
day on a cash register serving frenzied shoppers not so far from here. I am not
really ready for this, but I know the basic notation well enough that I can
always return to the original key and starting point for the next phrase if I
need to.

People are on their
way back in to the chapel after lighting their candles and praying outside,
where the Mass begins. My head is seething with a panic caused by a chain of
events that was started in that same place as the cash register I worked today.
My job is my one place of refuge outside of school, but it has also become a
place of darkness, marked by spaces where I cannot go for fear that HE will
seek me out. It is bad enough that when he tells me to meet him at his car
around the corner from work I have to do so, but now he might hurt me at work
too – this is where it started, you see. It has been going on for a few months
now, and for some reason, here in a place of worship, my mind lingers on the
traumatic details. Why now?, my mind protests – I mean, really? Is it somehow
part of God’s plan for me to be panicking while I sing His praises?

The Bishop goes first,
his voice really quite decent for a man his age. Priests are rarely singers,
and even more rarely good ones, but his does his job. I am conscious of Marie
close by, she has not a doubt in her mind that I can do this, she pushed for me
to take over the job from a man unwilling to let it go. I remember that I am in
a venue where the acoustics do most of your work for you. I breathe in, and
sing out, and I hear a voice that has changed so much, so very recently. I am a
mezzo now, a grown up singer, still
changing, but definitely more adult. I look up into the vaulted ceiling and hit
the notes just so, as needed. I do not falter. I hear my voice ring out in a
beautiful venue with a full chapel beneath me, and I realise that although my
life is falling apart, I can do this.
This is still mine, and that small moment of pride stays with me, even as the
shame and pain of everything else colours my life, both that night and for the
rest of the year. Tonight I become a little more like a woman.

It’s all thirteen years ago now, but it’s so easy to write
it all in the present tense. This last Saturday night I sang the piece again,
as I do every year. Easter all about the rituals within the liturgy, but it’s
also the rituals created around the practice of it. For me, even though I no
longer consider myself to be Catholic, it means singing at Maundy Thursday Mass,
the Good Friday ceremony at 3pm and then Easter Vigil on Saturday evening. I
stay in the family house with people who fast and take this stuff very seriously.
I walk to and from this lovely chapel, still with the beautiful acoustics, that
remains such a feature in my working life, and on a piece of land where I
exercise almost daily. And I sing the Exsultet in full, by myself now, feeling a
connection with my past and my future and with the faith that still has elements
of beauty that move me. I still use the same copy of the music with Marie’s
handwriting all over it, marked up terribly in a way that would make me ashamed
to show it to anyone else. (Marie doesn’t sing with us anymore, she’s in her
late eighties and now has trouble placing me when I call. The Bishop retired
some years ago, and I have no idea where he is these days.) When people talk
about the exciting things they’re going to do over the Easter break and ask
what I will do I smile and say ‘lots of singing’, because I know exactly where
I will be, and what I will be doing. I will be upstairs in that hot, stuffy
gallery, singing beautiful music with people I care about, gently touching the
music marked by someone I love, and then walk home in the crisp Autumn air.* I
think of the man who tore my life apart, wonder what happened to him, and am
filled with regrets. I remember a time when I was even more trapped and
confused than I am now, and am grateful for how far I have come.

* Autumn in Sydney always seems to only kick into gear at
Easter, for some reason. Doesn’t matter whether it’s early or late, Autumn
waits for Easter.